The Golden Gate Bridge

Photo of the Day

Part of the fun of going to California this year was to see San Francisco. I have always loved the town from afar, and it was amazing to get to visit it. After being up 23 hours Friday I took what amounted to a short nap before getting up to head to the Marin Headlands to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge at sunrise. I still had not seen the historic bridge before heading out that morning. I made my plans for the shoot completely based off an an e-book by Rob Dweck. The free book gives exact locations for some of the best views of the bridge. I only had one shot at getting the bridge so I wanted a higher location in case fog rolled in. I chose Hawk Hill as my vantage point as it gave me the best view in any conditions. This shot was taken on Conzelman Road just before Hawk Hill though. I couldn’t wait to get a picture, and the light was just right. I pulled over to make this picture. It was a good thing that I did as the gate giving access to Hawk Hill had not yet been opened. I did get some great knowledge while shooting from a very nice local who helped me gain access to another area later on that I would not have tried. A couple of pictures from that quest will appear later on I am sure.

Technical Data

Here is where things get interesting. I set up very quickly on the hill to get a shot before the light came up. I set my camera to f/10 to allow me to get a little longer exposure. I wanted at least a 30 second exposure to smooth out the water, and also to create the light streaks on the bridge from the early morning traffic. I shot three frames in order to make an HDR image in Photomatix. When I was on my way home I processed this image in Photomatix. I saved the 32 bit image, but I also tried to tonemap the image. I really thought that the tonemapping process just created a result that was not very realistic. I opened up the 32 bit image in Lightroom to see what I could do with it. I really worked hard at creating an image here that represented the beauty that I saw that morning. I kept working the sliders until I was happy with the result. Having the information from the three images helped the process very much. The one odd thing that had to be done involves the lower left corner. A car was running on the overlook with its lights on while everyone was shooting. Those lights lit up some brush in that corner that I had to get rid of. I simply used the brush in Lightroom to paint over the brush that was lit, and I just adjusted the exposure until it was blended in like it should have been.